by Daniel Hopsicker
October 31--Venice, Florida.
Jackson Stephens, a name
often linked with America’s super-secret National Security Agency,
has been an influential presence for several decades in the tiny town which
served as port of entry into U.S. flight and even military training for
the terrorist cadre implicated in the Sept 11 attack.
A block away from the Venice
Florida airport stands an opulent three-story red brick building
that is a monument to the rivers of money flowing through the Stephens
financial empire.
Looking eerily-reminiscent
of the plush digs of the law firm in the Tom Cruise movie "The Firm," or
a particularly-ostentatious Southern Governors’ mansion, the building
seems out of place alongside the weed-strewn airport perimeter.
This was the national headquarters
of Jackson Stephen's Beverly Enterprises. It is a stone’s throw from
the Venice Airport.
Gleaming like a movie set
and basking in Florida's Indian summer, the building still houses Stephens
former law firm, local political powerhouse Boone Boone & Boone, a
firm which worked so closely with client Stephens that at least one of
his executives was permanently housed there.
"I don’t think you could
safely say that they (Boone & Boone) runs everything in town," said
one local observer. "But you could safely say they run almost everything.
They exert a strong influence here, including out at the airport."
Why did Mohammed Atta and
his terrorist cadre pick tiny Venice, Florida to be their terrorist beachhead?
Did puritanical Islamic fundamentalists
have a previously-unknown fascination or fetish for kindly Caucasian widows
with blue hair, so abundant here?
Or were they instead drawn
by a covert operation of the U.S. intelligence agency to which Stephens
is persistently linked, the National Security Agency?
Curiously, furious government
intelligence officials yesterday accused the NSA of destroying data pertinent
to the Sept 11 probe, reported the Boston Globe, stating possible leads
stemming from the Sept. 11 attack weren't being followed because of the
NSA.
Jackson Stephens name, so
often linked to the NSA, has made a brief appearance in almost every whispered-about
scandal or cover-up in America in the past two decades.
He was named in the BCCI
criminal bank scandal, in the death of Vince Foster and the stolen Promis
software scandal of the Justice Dept, and in the 1996 campaign finance
scandal involving allegations of Red Chinese money.
Most notably, Jackson Stephens
has already been named in one intelligence-related aviation scandal: the
gun-running and cocaine smuggling at Mena, Arkansas during the 1980’s
that was behind Iran Contra and Whitewater.
Were Stephens to be implicated
in yet-another intelligence-related aviation scandal, it would be, for
him, something very much like two in a row.
More about Stephens: he was
the chief domestic campaign contributor to both George Bush Senior and
Bill Clinton.
"At first glance it might
seem curious that former President George Bush would attend an event honoring
Jackson T. Stephens, the biggest Democratic power broker in Bill Clinton's
home state," read one news report. "But Mr. Stephens, a self-made billionaire
investment banker and philanthropist, is financing a cause that transcends
politics: golf."
While Mr. Stephens is often
busy with his many philanthropic activities, he did manage to have found
enough time to later be fingered as the "Old Man" behind the Mena, Arkansas
cocaine smuggling scandal dogging Bill Clinton throughout his time in office.
Interestingly enough, the
Venice Airport also surfaced briefly in the questioning of Oliver North
during the Iran Contra hearings, when a man with a local aviation business
named Joe Duncan was alleged to have run guns to the Contras from the airport.
Stephens' colorful curriculum
vitae also includes the fact that he was roommates with President Jimmy
Carter at the US Naval Academy.
The founder of Stephens’
law firm in Venice, E.G. Dan Boone, is also no slouch in the roommate department.
His college roommate, back when both were Florida Gators, was former Florida
Governor Lawton Chiles.
Jackson Stephen’s connections
to Venice Florida are raising anew questions about the shadowy "international
networks" reputed to have aided and harbored the Arab men who carried out
the most heinous terrorist crime in history.
Did 19 Arab men from desert
kingdoms roam the Florida Gulf Coast as freely as if they’d been listening
to Tom Petty albums all their lives....without U.S. Government knowledge
and approval?
In a series of articles touching
on Stephens five years ago called "Allegations Regarding Vince Foster,
the NSA, and Banking Transactions Spying, Prof. J. Orlin Grabbe wrote,
"In 1983 the Stephens brothers acquired controlling interest in Arkansas'
largest bank holding company, Worthen Banking Corp. Another major shareholder
in Worthen was Mochtar Riady, an Indonesian banker closely connected to
President Suharto. Jackson Stephens met Riady in 1976, when Riady wanted
to buy into an American bank. Two years later Riady and Stephens Inc. set
up a joint venture, Stephens Finance Ltd., in Hong Kong."
"Later in 1983 Stephens and
Riady bought Seng Heng Bank in Macao, and in 1984 they bought the Hong
Kong Chinese Bank," Grabbe wrote.
"Hong Kong was then the banking
center for the heroin trade, just as Panama was the banking center for
the cocaine trade."
Whoops.
Osama Bin Laden has been
cited by numerous sources as being involved in the heroin trade, dominated
by his adopted country of Afghanistan.
The typical deal, according
to knowledgeable sources, is oil and heroin for weapons and training.
Besides knowledge of how
to steer a Boeing airliner into a 110-story skyscraper, were there other
commodities, too, being traded on the Gulf Coast of Florida, while the
terrorist pilots practiced touch and go’s at the Venice airport?
Presumably the FBI has already
looked into all of this.
In another development, Rudi
Dekkers, owner of the flight school of choice for the terrorists, has reportedly
been indicted within the past several days in Holland, his native country,
on financial charges that may include fraud and money laundering, according
to law enforcement officials.
Dutch authorities first recognized
Dekkers on CNN, where he was ubiquitous in the days after the disaster,
said a second source, who credited Larry King Live for having performed,
in this case, a function normally reserved for shows like America’s Most
Wanted.
Dekkers professed to be unaware
of any pending indictment...
"My lawyer in the Netherlands
has said nothing to me about any indictment," he said.
Dekkers told us, "I can’t
imagine that I could have done anything wrong."
Anonymous Rant of the Week:
"Ramsey Yousef proclaimed
after his first failed attempt to topple the WTC, that "next time they
would take down BOTH towers"! On 9-11-01, his promise was carried out!
WHY was absolutely NOTHING done by our government to better protect those
two buildings and the poor innocents who perished there needlessly? It's
not like we didn't know "they" were trying to bring them down! We had eight
years to prepare, yet we did NOTHING! We practically invited them to blow
up the Twin Towers! Is it any wonder they finally got around to actually
DOING it? What was stopping them? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!"
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